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‘Pussy Riot’ trial punks Russia’s rulers

The Pussy Riot show trial mocks Russia&rsquo;s rulers.

Members of female punk band "Pussy Riot" Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, left, Maria Alekhina, centre and Yekaterina Samutsevich sit inside a glass enclosure during a court hearing in Moscow on August 8, 2012. They have been jailed for crudely calling on the Virgin Mary to “put Putin away.”
(NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA / AFP)

Wed., Aug. 8, 2012

Punk’d. That’s how Russian President Vladimir Putin, a latter-day czar, must have felt when the feminist Pussy Riot band invaded Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow last winter to belt out a “punk prayer” crudely calling on the Virgin Mary to “put Putin away.”

Now, after a Stalin-like show trial that has just ground to a close, it is the punkers themselves who may be put away. Next week Judge Marina Syrova will decide their fate in a case that has exposed the hypersensitive Putin regime and its legal system to ridicule and has validated criticism that it tolerates no dissent.

The crazily-clad, high-kicking punkers spent all of 40 seconds on their protest in an all-but-empty church. No one but Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill’s clerics and a few bystanders had cause to be offended. Even so, Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich, all in their 20s, have spent five months in the slammer, far more than their minor key sacrilege deserves. The video, of course, went viral.

Now even Putin has finally acknowledged the damage this is doing to Russia’s image. Taking a break from shielding Syria’s dictator, he has urged that the once-obscure punkers not “be judged so harshly” at sentencing. But Kirill, who hailed Putin as “a gift from God” and told the faithful to vote for him, is outraged at this affront to an ally. So a case that would be laughed off as a joke in Canada has been elevated to hooliganism driven by religious hatred. Prosecutors want a three-year jail term. This is persecution not prosecution.

“We’re clowns,” not criminals, says Tolokonnikova, “We engage in buffoonery. We’re kind of crazy, but we don’t promote any evil.”

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Indeed the legitimate target of their political satire, which would barely raise an eyebrow here, was the cozy alliance between Putin and the clergy, and Putin’s authoritarian clampdown on dissent. Since reassuming the presidency he has hiked fines for protesters, tightened control of the Internet and hobbled foreign-funded lobby groups. Amnesty International regards the punkers as prisoners of conscience. Madonna urged their release at her Moscow concert this week, as other celebrities have.

The authorities would have been wiser to shrug off this spectacle as a prank. Now many Russians, like the punk provocateurs, have cause to feel that freedom has been “sent to Siberia in chains,” as the group sang in church. It’s an unholy mess.

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